Like most years the talk around foreign relievers making the move from NPB over to the states is ramping up once again. This time the talk is over one of the brightest foreign closers that the Central League has to offer: Robert Suarez of the Hanshin Tigers.
Reports came early about Suarez having interest from MLB. Although based on recent performance this interest shouldn’t come as a surprise. As well as the increasing tradition of looking towards NPB and KBO for the pitching market is becoming a larger focus for teams.
So let’s take a look at Suarez.
Robert Suarez is a 6’2” 210lb RHP who has pitched in NPB since joining the SoftBank Hawks back for the 2016 season. Suarez was an OK reliever in that first year but had to get TJ after getting injured in the 2017 WBC. SoftBank didn’t use him as much in the next two seasons after missing all of the 2017 season. Gladly, the Tigers picked up Suarez and has since lead the Central League (CL) in saves for both the 2020 (25) and 2021 (42) seasons.
He has a big powerful arm that reaches triple-digits (topped out at 101) but often sits 97+. Despite the heat, he is reserved in his delivery. We in the “business” call this “easy gas”, it shows in any of the footage you watch of him. Also interesting when you see his delivery combined with the fact that his average velo for all of his pitches have increased in each of the past two years since joining Hanshin. It’s a nice repeatable delivery that is controlled and doesn’t get wild like most high powered arms. I like the shape of the fastball as it’s relatively flat (I wish I had the data for it’s IVB) and can miss bats. He likes to throw the fastball like the dart that is, often placing it very well on the inside third of the plate or at the bottom of the zone.
Suarez has chosen to go for a two-seam more this year than last year and it has relatively made a difference. However, I don’t see a major difference stats wise between the offering over the 4-seam variant, besides for the extra run of course. He mostly works between these two fastballs with the two-seam at 46% and the four-seam at 30%. Both pitches work very well with the weighted value of both pitches being fairly high, wFA/C of 2.76 (2nd in NPB out of all pitchers with 40 IP) and wFT/C of 2.94 (4th) for the year. Although this stat can be a little finicky, this is just an easy way to show that these two pitches are strong compared to the rest of the league.
His best off-speed pitch this year has been the changeup. A brutal slow orb that dies at the plate, forcing hitters to swing over expecting a brigade of fastballs (as shown in the video above this). It pairs well with the fastball and misses bats around 88 mph on average. He switched around the usage between the past two years, choosing to swap his splitter usage from 2020 with the change up as the main secondary. Swapping from what was an effective 5% usage in 2020 (1.4 wCH) to a just as good 18.4% (2.1 wCH). He has still thrown the splitter here and there as a mixer at 2.6% usage. Both of the pitches are sitting in the high 80s of velocity range, I wouldn’t be surprised if he brings it back in the future if the changeup isn’t finding as much success.
He also throws a slider to throw off hitters from the fastball/changeup combo at 3.5% usage. The pitch can get easy strikes earlier in the count knowing that hitters are most likely sitting and looking for a hittable fastball. It’s smart the way he mixes the pitch in. He has also thrown a curve in the past when he was with the Hawks, but I like the mix he has currently. Just gives more things for teams to test and tweak in their lab.
A large part of his success can be shown in the control aspects of his year. While his K% remained fairly similar from last year, increasing just by a mere 1.3% to 25.3%, it’s the major change in his walk percentage that was the key. Going from a pretty good 9.1% in 2020 to a league best 3.5% for this year, in turn helping to juice his K-BB% from 14.9% up to 21.8 (6th best in NPB with minimum of 40 IP), a near full 7% swing. All of this culminated into career bests in BAA (0.183), WHIP (0.77), LOB% (81.3%), xFIP (2.50), ERA (1.16) and 2.3 WAR. Suarez produced more soft contact this year as well, increasing from 16.2% up to 21.3%, taking away from that mid%, which was down from 54.4 to 48.1. While the hard hit percentage remained similar to round out the remainder. Helping him last the entirety of his 62.1 IP without allowing a single HR for 2021.
Although the rest of the batted ball numbers haven't shifted much from last year. If anything they got a tiny bit for the worse, but I wouldn’t put too much into the changes due to the small differences. His FB% increased just by 2.6% to 32.7%, GB% down 5.7% to 56.8%, while the LD% went up by 4.1% for the remaining 10.5%. Same for the plate discipline numbers, no real major differences to mention, with all of them, outside of O-Contact% (62.8 -> 68.3), being within a 2-3% increase.
Not to mention that Suarez was easily one of the most consistent high leverage closers this year in NPB. Many relievers can have a hot couple months whenever they’re feeling good, but Suarez was fantastic all year long. Only really hitting bumps in a 3.1 IP July, when he had his only loss of the year, and September when he started getting hit more than usual. However, he immediately bounced back in October with a great K/9 of 12.00 and 0.58 WHIP for the month.
Overall, Suarez in my mind is definitely worth the shot at the major league level. You can get a quality velo arm that showed intriguing amounts of control with room to grow in his secondaries. Whether that success comes will have to be discovered, if it doesn’t work out, then he can always come back to Japan and continue to be a top closer.
(photo credit: 上田博志 of Nikkan Sports)